Translation manuals and style guides as quality assurance indicators: The case of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation

The aim of this chapter is to verify the assumption that institutional translation on the supranational level is, by definition, concerned primarily with terminology, style guides, it is standardized and its quality aspect is governed by rules (cf. \citealt{Koskinen2008}, \citealt{Schäffner2014}, it will concentrate on translation manuals and style guides, since extensive studies on this topic seem to have been missing from academic research. To fill this gap as regards inquiries into the workings of one particular (EU) institution, this chapter presents the results of research into translation manuals and style guides used by and within the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation (DGT). The DGT on-line collection of guidelines (referred to as the Resources website here), which primarily offers materials to DGT contractors, represents arguably the most extensive and most complex translation resource ever compiled. The present research is based on empirical data: as of the time of the study (the first half of 2017), a total of 793 links to individual translation manuals and style guides were included in a research corpus encompassing all the 24 official languages of the EU. The information was surveyed using a blend of quantitative and qualitative approaches. As for the results, the extensiveness of the DGT reference material could be shown together with its linkages to the translation quality aspect, whether these are explicit or implicit. As regards the structure of the resources, an overall top-down standardization approach could be proven, although, at the same time, they show a certain degree of variation. The following areas were identified as being the crucial requirements DGT has vis-à-vis its contractors: references to EU institutions and DGT departments, binding terminology resources and the Interinstitutional Style Guide.